


Falling a Little Behind

by yuletide_archivist



Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Horus/Ibis.  Ibis writes a story for himself for a change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling a Little Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Argyle

 

 

Title: Falling a Little Behind

Pairing: Horus/Ibis

Rating: Probably only PG, but I'm saying PG-13 to be safe.

Notes: None of these characters are mine, they belong to the ancient Egyptians and to Neil Gaiman. I had always said (and quite loudly at that) that writing any good slash for American Gods was nearly impossible. I was very, very loud in this assertion. So when I got this assignment, I was terrified. I'd said it couldn't be done, and now I had to do it. Hopefully, I've succeeded, but that's for you to judge. Merry Christmas!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

The funny thing about writing other people's stories, _wrote Mr. Ibis, poised in a chair in his room at the crumbling house,_ is that when it comes time to write one that involves you, somewhat intimately, one might say, it is hard to know where to start. Does one begin at the beginning of the tale as seen through the eyes of the main character, the one who the story is officially, at least, about? Or does one take a more self-indulgent path, beginning, not where the story really begins, but rather at the point at which one's own entrance is made. It is a difficult decision, for if you choose to tell the story from your entrance, readers will know that the story is biased. If you, instead, tell the story from the beginning, no one will know that you are secretly twisting things, writing them cleverly in light of your own involvement. It is why I prefer, on the whole, to write stories that belong to other people, and have no connection to myself.

This, alas, _he paused, considering not stating the soon-to-be obvious and then relenting,_ is not one of those stories. This is a story out of which I cannot remove myself neatly, like one might remove a knife from a piece of fully cooked pie, cleanly and without mess. I am tangled up in this story, in it's madness, and death, as it swoops high and then dives to the ground below. This is the story of Horus, the falcon headed god of the sun, and I have elected, at least for the time being, to selfishly begin this story where it began to involve me.

Of course, it involved me in one form or fashion long before the point at which I so boldly propose to begin. I was _familiar_ with Horus long before we were brought to America, long before we began to fade, as the stars fade at dawn, one by one into the sky. We were not often in one another's company until we moved to Cairo, here. Some myths painted me as his tutor, but in reality, I barely saw him. He had his duties and I had mine and we might see each other every once and awhile, but we always passed, like office workers in same building, but not the same floor, coolly polite and wholly uninterested in one another. But then, we were stuck here together. And over time, everything began to change.

I do not know whether to blame or to thank Set, even after all of this time. He and Horus had never gotten along-- though the mortals got many other things wrong about their family's unusual and, shall we say, fairly bloody history, they got the general feelings of the family towards one another pretty spot on. To this day, I maintain that it was only Bastet that kept the two of them from attempting to murder one another with greater frequency than they did. None of us were intended to ever spend a long amount of time in one another's company. For Anubis and I, it was fairly easy. For Bastet, easier still. But the two of them...

Horus wasn't in his right mind the first night he burst into my study. It was the first time I had seen him where I could truly say, beyond my ability to doubt, that he was mad. It would not be the last, and something about that night made me realize that the moment I saw him. I was seeing him at the beginning of the dive, wings just folded against himself, preparing to plummet. That night, he took me with him.

I had had female companions, back in Egypt, some of which time connects with me still, some it has forgotten, but I had never had companionship of the male sort. In his madness, he was not gentle, I think some part of him mistook me for Set, but I did not complain. I merely learned, observed, catalogued and measured, comparing him to others that I knew, comparing this form of physical connection with other forms, weighed the male with the female. It was not unpleasant, really, though there was certainly an element of the horrific to it from another`s perspective, I'm sure. It was scholarly, from my end of things at least, and while quite the experience, it wasn't exactly what is known vulgarly as "mind-blowing".

The second time was a different matter altogether.

I think he originally came to apologize for the time before, and he did, but not before he had tumbled into my arms, youthful as ever, and pressed his lips, warm like the Nile's surface, against mine. I do not think it was his intention to do so, he seemed as surprised as I to discover that we were, indeed, kissing. I'm not certain why I didn't pull back, or why he didn't. Maybe it was that there is, and has always been, power in sex. Maybe he was trying to save himself from his madness and I was trying to help him. Maybe we merely believed in each other, and that was enough, in a world that had mostly forgotten us. Or maybe it was the simplest of the reasons; the most basic of needs fulfilled. Maybe we were both just lonely.

No matter the reason, his flesh was hot against mine, smooth under my fingers. He tasted like ancient things and I traced glyphs on his back with my fingers, spelling out words that were, for once, meaningless. Ibis's are not meant to dive, our necks get in the way, but I plummeted alongside him that night, flesh tangled with flesh, the taste of battle riding on his tongue into my mouth, his mouth as noisy as mine was silent, though I drank his words, composed with them, stored them away as a different sort of knowledge.

And so it was every night until his madness left him little more than a beast and he flew away. Part of me always wished that I could follow, descend into the same reckless oblivion that he had. But ibises are not meant to dive and there is just a little too much faith in knowledge and books in this world for me to pass into insanity. And, of course, there is part of me that continues to hang on with all it's might, like a swimmer committing suicide struggles for the surface at the last moment, desperate for air, no matter how much I might wish it otherwise. And there is always Anubis to consider...

I do not know what this battle of Wednesday's will bring. I do not know how much longer I have to compose my stories, pen moving frantically over paper. I doubt that I myself will fight these new gods-- writing, knowledge, has always been my specialty, not war. The closest I ever came to war was the night Horus burst into my room, but if everything else falls, I don't doubt I will soon follow, a domino far from the initial strike. If that happens, if the end comes, then I want someone to be able to read this story, I want some part of all of this to be immortal, outlasting the gods it was written about. I do not want him to be a forgotten madman, a falcon caught by a falconer, a curiosity. I want someone to know that, once, his flesh was hot under someone's tongue, once his breath was warm in another's mouth, that his hair, before it was matted with dirt and blood, was fire under my fingers, and smelled of oil and perfume.

For once, I do not want to write a story that belongs to someone else.

For once, I want a story that lives only for me.

Plummeting. Insensible. Free.

 


End file.
